Phone: 317-274-7394Email: wheelerr@iupui.eduDepartment: Religious Studies, Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, Max Kade German-American Center, Consortium for the Study of Religion, Ethics, and Society

Campus Address: CA 335B

Education

B.A. Carleton College 1991M.A. Yale University 1993Ph.D. Yale University 1998

Academic Interests

American religious history, colonial American history, Native American religions, religion and food, religion and music

Publications

To Live upon Hope: Mohicans and Missionaries in the Eighteenth-Century Northeast Cornell University Press, 2008
Articles in Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, Religion and American Culture: A Reader, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture and The Journal of the Early Republic

Bio

My research interests lie primarily in early American religious history. My first book, To Live upon Hope: Mohicans and Missionaries in the Eighteenth-Century Northeast, explored the experience of Mohican Indians with German-Moravian and Anglo-Protestant missionaries and examined the distinctive forms of native Christianity that emerged out of the two mission settings. I spent the year 2011-2012 in Germany on a Fulbright fellowship working on a new book project, a biography of a Mohican-Moravian man named Joshua who lived through the many wars and revivals of the eighteenth century in a very precarious position as an Indian and a Christian. Together with Florida State University musicologist, Sarah Eyerly, I received an American Council of Learned Societies Collaborative Research Fellowship for 2017-2018 to research and revive eighteenth century Mohican language hymns. I also translated my love of food into a blog piece on food and religion, titled “Locavangelism: Eating as Spiritual Practice” for the blog, “Religion in American History.” I am also currently working on an article about Daniel Boone and Joshua, the Mohican.